Page 12 of Pistol Whipped

“Why not? You know what this tour could do? For me? For Dax?! For all of us?!” I toss back at him, “Get me a fucking pen and sign me the hell up.”

“What about Rain!” he argues.

“What about her?” I counter.

That gets him up and off the couch.

“She’s fucking toxic, Dutch, that’s why! She’ll ruin this whole thing before it even gets started! We have to be united on this! We can’t trust her not to fuck this up! That’s what she does!”

“Stop throwing yourself such a goddamn pity party. You weren’t exactly innocent in what happened,” I retort.

That does it. He’s ranting and shouting, pacing back and forth as he calls Rain a whore repeatedly. That grinds my gears, but I bite my cheek to keep from cussing him out. He can say what he wants about Rain. It won’t make me believe it, and it won’t change my mind. I ignore the rest of the garbage he’s spewing and head for the kitchen, where I pull open a couple of drawers before I find the universal, exists in everyone’s house ever, junk drawer and a pen. Swirling it between my fingertips, the way I’m itching to do with drumsticks again after so long, I look back at my distraught friend.

He doesn’t deserve it, but sue me, I take a little bit of pity on him with a bit of not-so-tough love, “You need to decide, Cohen, either you deal with Rain or resign yourself to a life as Mommy and Daddy’s kept boy. Because I don’t see this going any other way. Lou’s not just going to bring in someone else because you asked nicely.”

That makes his brown eyes widen. His mouth hangs open like I’ve slapped him when all I’m doing is telling him the damn truth. My old friend clearly needs a few more people around him willing to call a spade a spade.

“If it means I don’t have to go back to hauling parts in a cold-ass warehouse, if it helps Dallas stay clean, hell, if it means I get to play the drums again, I can deal with a little Rain.”

I scrawl my initials across the signature line. And take the liberty of forging my brother’s too. Punk rock saved us once before. Maybe it can do it again.

Interlude 3

That’s What You Get

Dutch – aged 19, thirteen years ago

Watching my best friends fall in love is some kind of sick torture. Especially when I’m the one who saw Rain first, and know for a fact that I was the one who loved her first. Not Cohen Brady. I’d already been rehearsing my jokes for a year before he showed up, always in the hopes of hearing her twinkling laugh or of seeing her smile my way. But nahhh, Cohen just waltzed into our friend group and little-kid-me was dumb enough to let him. Dumb enough to make him one of my best friends. Hell, my only friend other than Rain and my brother. I love him too. Not like that. Not like Rain. But I do love him. And that’s what makes it so much worse when she tells me, “I love him, Dutch. Or at least, I think I do.”

Her voice is the tiniest squeak. You’d never know that inside her slight frame is the voice of an avenging angel, that is, unless you’ve listened to the radio lately. In which case, you will have heard our song, ‘A Thousand Hearts’. Since Lou had us record it properly as a single, instead of just some shitty video shot on a cell phone, it’s turned out way fucking better than any of us could have anticipated.

We’re back in the studio today after a week’s worth of celebrating, hence why Rain and I are sitting in the dark studio with the lights off while my idiot brother and Cohen are chucking up their guts in the toilet down the hall. Apparently, according to Rain, they both took something at Club Vix last night, and now it’s taken us hours to get a single track laid because they’re too hungover and fucked up to record.

I was the only one on time today because, unlike these other fools, I still have my job as an overnight hauler at one of the many Rothus Industries warehouses scattered throughout downtown. It seems stupid to give it up too soon, since Dallas and I still need a roof over our heads, and we won’t get our first cut from the label until the album comes out and they see how it does. Which meant I turned up after working all fucking night, sober and ready to get this done. It wasn’t until an hour later that Cohen strolled in with Rainy tucked under his scrawny arm, and my brother at his side as usual. I couldn’t help my frustration at the sight of them all. Rainy’s eyes were wide and glassy, and both Cohen and my brother were loose and moving slowly.

“What the fuck?” I’d asked, “Are you wasted?”

My questions were directed at all of them, and at least my brother and Rain had the decency to look embarrassed. Cohen grinned. “We were celebrating, and then, you know, my girl and I, we just lost track of time.”

He’d nuzzled his nose into her hair. It’s dyed a shade of purple so dark that unless the light hits it just right, you’d think it was fully black. The shine of it is addictive, just like everything else about her. She’d giggled, and my fury faded, torn in half because she is happy.

Cohen makes her happy. That’s something I can never be mad about. The problem is, he also makes her reckless. More reckless than normal, and I’m not sure Rain Gamble has a good enough command of her off-switch to stop when she needs to. After all, she was the one who started our wave of petty crime and refused to stop until we were stood in front of the police. Even then, I’m not sure she would have stopped if Grams hadn’t suggested music as an alternative.

The one thing she does seem to recognize is that pills aren’t for her, which is why she’s in here with me, in that middle state between drunk and hungover where she’s coherent but doesn’t yet feel like absolute ass, instead of in the ladies’ washroom dry heaving.

It hit Dallas first. He turned pale, cursed and dropped his bass faster than I’ve ever seen him move, followed closely by Cohen’s “oh fuck,” and subsequent exit. With them gone, Rain asked the sound tech to lower the lights like she always did when she had some big secret to tell me; she pulled me by the hand until we were somewhere she felt comfortable spilling the details. In this case, that was in the corner behind my drum kit, where she is now confessing the depths of her feelings for Cohen to me.

While I fucking die inside.

“I love him,” she repeats. “Do you think I should tell him?”

What am I supposed to say to that? Yes—tell him, so I can have the fucking agony of watching you two live out your happily ever after. Or no, don’t tell him, so I have a little more time to imagine that one day you’ll wake up and decide to be mine and not Cohen’s. Except I see the anxiety twitching behind her wide eyes; I notice the wobble in her bottom lip. I see the way she, even now, with him not in the room, leans towards the door because that’s where Cohen is, and so I do the only thing I can. I tell the truth.

“Cohen is in love with you too. He told Dallas and me last week. He’s planning to tell you when we finish recording the album. So when he does, you can say it back.”

My reward is a radiant smile that graces her face and her scrawny arms wrapping around me. She squeezes me tight and squeaks, “Thank you for telling me! You are the best, Dutch. I love you.”

“I love you, too, Rainy. Only act surprised, okay? Because I don’t need Cohen pissed at me for being a narc.”